A Satirical Spin on Stereotypes, at Home, Abroad and on Broadway

Form follows function so closely that it trips itself up in “Yellow Face,” David Henry Hwang’s lively, messy and provocative cultural self-portrait of a play. This exploration of one man’s personal and social identity crisis, which opened last night at the Public Theater, suffers from its own artistic identity crisis.

Shifting from stand-up satire and one-liners to lacerating anguish and recriminations, this latest work from the Tony-winning author of “M. Butterfly” takes such a radical twist in tone that it leaves you with whiplash. It’s like a late-night phone call from a friend in crisis who begins by cracking wise and ends by sobbing convulsively.

There’s no doubt that it’s Mr. Hwang himself on the line, pouring his divided heart out. Lest you have any doubts on that subject, know that the protagonist of this woozy blend of fact and fantasy is named David Henry Hwang, the author of “M. Butterfly” and probing explorer of what it means to be Asian-American.

As written by Mr. Hwang and portrayed by Hoon Lee, D H H (as the character is identified in the program) is not a lovable guy, although he can be pretty funny. He’s a fame-craving, creatively constipated, ideologically conflicted and often cowardly fellow with a predilection for pornography and late-night drunken phone calls to women he barely knows.

To its credit, “Yellow Face” lets nobody off the hook. That includes superficial theater people (whom Mr. Hwang doesn’t hesitate to identify by their real names), earnest members of ethnic self-help groups, racist politicians and The New York Times. But it comes down hardest on David Henry Hwang.

The taking-off point of “Yellow Face,” directed in the perky style of a comedy revue by Leigh Silverman (“Well”), is a fabled clash of showbiz politics from 1990. That’s when Mr. Hwang and his friend the actor B. D. Wong (deliciously impersonated by Francis Jue), became the most famous public faces of the opposition to the use of Jonathan Pryce, a Welsh actor, in the starring role of a Eurasian in the New York production of the megamusical “Miss Saigon.”

Mr. Hwang is ruthless in portraying how D H H ardently embraced and then dropped this cause célèbre. Asked to appear at a rally to put pressure on Actors Equity (which finally ruled in favor of allowing Mr. Pryce to appear), he responds, “But the artistic freedom thing  between you and me, I think this is starting to make us  look bad.”

As his hesitant delivery suggests, D H H’s motives are anything but clear-cut. The same ambiguity is evident in his subsequent decision to cast Marcus (played by Noah Bean as a generic actor in eternal search of a part) in the leading role of Mr. Hwang’s next play, the famous flop “Face Value.”

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Hoon Lee as David Henry Hwang, and Julienne Hanzelka Kim in Yellow Face, by Mr. Hwang.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

The role, you see, is Asian-American, and Marcus doesn’t look remotely Asian. It turns out that he isn’t, although D H H does some ardent rationalizing (and outright lying) to stretch ethnic definitions. Marcus takes this newly minted identity and runs with it, touring as the King in “The King and I” and speaking out about discrimination against Asian artists.

For its erratically entertaining first act, “Yellow Face” registers as a quick-sketch variation on the classic comedy of imposture, vaguely in the vein of Ben Hecht and Preston Sturges screen satires. The joke-driven dialogue sticks close to a glib surface more appropriate to a topical stand-up routine or Mr. Hwang’s books for the Disney musicals “Aida” and “Tarzan.”

But there’s an insider’s glee in impersonations of real denizens of the New York theater (from the producer Stuart Ostrow to the actress Jane Krakowski) by a protean cast, which also includes Julienne Hanzelka Kim, Kathryn A. Layng, Lucas Caleb Rooney and Anthony Torn. That these performers, whose names suggest their diverse ethnicities, embody all sorts of racial types adds an appropriately surreal spin to the play’s questions of cultural role-playing, in and out of the theater.

In the second act things turn increasingly grave. Mr. Hwang’s father, Henry Y. Hwang (here called H Y H), who has hitherto been portrayed (by Mr. Jue), as your standard-issue irritating cartoon parent, becomes a tragic figure. The C.E.O. of the Far East National Bank, he is the subject of a government investigation into money laundering for the Central Bank of China. His case is paralleled to that of Wen Ho Lee, the Chinese-American nuclear scientist who was imprisoned on suspicion of spying in the late 1990s.

In the play Henry Hwang’s chief persecutor is a reporter for The New York Times, played by Mr. Torn and identified as “Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel.” The capping moment in D H H’s realization that cultural identity is not just an abstract debate comes in a scene in which he is interviewed by this reporter, whose implicit racial stereotyping of Asians so appalls (and presumably enlightens) Mr. Hwang that he tells Name Withheld that he plans to make him a character in his next play.

It was an uncomfortable scene for me, as someone who writes for The Times.

But while the interview is chillingly played by Mr. Lee and Mr. Torn, it registers as just another jagged piece in a collage assembled in haste. Previously staged at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, “Yellow Face” feels less like a fully developed work than a scattershot, personal venting of painful emotions, still waiting to assume a polished form.

The play’s title, by the way, refers to the Asian equivalent of black face. It is Mr. Hwang’s reasonable contention that we are all imprisoned by masks. And a newly somber, sober D H H, who bears little resemblance to the comic-strip narcissist of the first act, informs us that he will now be searching for his real face. I look forward to seeing what he finds.